Edwin Klebs

Theodor Albrecht Edwin Klebs ( born February 6, 1834 in Königsberg, † October 23, 1913 in Bern ) was a German -Swiss physician and bacteriologist. Named after him is the bacterial genus Klebsiella.

Life and work

Edwin Klebs was born in 1834 as the son of country and city magistrate Friedrich Heinrich Klebs and his wife Sophie, born rich, in Königsberg.

Klebs studied from 1852 in Königsberg, Würzburg, Berlin and Jena medicine. In 1854, he was - like his brother Oskar - a member of the fraternity Germania Königsberg. It was founded in 1856 doctorate to the Dr. med.

He initially worked as a general practitioner in Königsberg, then in 1859 a lecturer and assistant professor at the University of Konigsberg. From 1861 he was assistant to Rudolf Virchow in Berlin.

In 1866 he was an associate professor of pathological anatomy in Bern and professor. In 1867 he became a full professor, married the Swiss Marie Rosetta Grossenbacher and acquired Swiss citizenship. His son was the medical historian Arnold C. Klebs.

In the Franco-German War he enlisted in the volunteer service as a medical officer in the Prussian army.

1871 founded the correspondence Klebs - sheet for Swiss physicians. From 1872 he was professor in Würzburg, 1873 in Prague. In 1882 he was again in Switzerland and became a full professor in Zurich. Together with Friedrich Loeffler discovered the bacterium Corynebacterium diphtheriae 1884, he, the causative agent of diphtheria. In 1893, he was forced to resign partly because of his advocacy for a better water supply during the typhus epidemic in Zurich.

He then went to the USA and in 1896 professor at Rush Medical College in Chicago. In 1900 he returned to Germany and in 1905 was private researcher in Berlin. In 1910 he retired and returned to Switzerland, where he lived with his eldest son. He died in 1913 in Bern.

Works

• Manual of pathological anatomy, 2 vols, Berlin 1868-1876